The Discussion Thread | The 12th Annual Greatest Games Event

[Darashiva]

Farsala said:

Darashiva said:

FFX is correct, and yes it is. The game's cutscenes had been programmed around the Japanese voice lines, so the English voice lines had to fit within the same number of frames because if the lines went longer the game would just stop working. That's also why the English lines are sometimes a bit awkward and stilted, as they had to fit an entirely different language into the constraints set by the rules of another language. 

The game's localization lead Alexander O. Smith said in an interview a few years ago that "Because the way that the game engine was triggering sound files was tied into the same system that it was using to trigger action on the screen, so if you had a sound file that went overboard by even half a second, it could throw off the entire scene and you could get a crash." 

They should do that more or hire Alexander again, because FFX's script and overall English localization is much better than anything else SE has put out.

He was a translator on Final Fantasy XII as well, and Tactics A2. I looked him up and he was apparently one of the writers on Ori and the Will of the Wisps most recently.